Also showing, theatre

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom National, London SE1
It’s a breathtaking evening. The second in August Wilson’s mighty 10 -play
cycle about the African-American 20th-century visits 1927, when the Southern
star Ma Rainey comes to Chicago to record her signature blues. Sharon D
Clarke’s imperious Ma arrives with her own weather system (storms imminent),
but the action shifts between the cavernous recording studio and a cramped
basement room where her musicians stew and bicker. The ambitious young jazz
trumpeter Levee (O-T Fagbenle, fingers twitching with frustration) can’t
wait to break away from the stoical older bandsmen. He craves the future,
but the white money men finagle it away. Ma says the blues are “life’s way
of talking” – the deep note of history, even as that history moves on,
discarding black memory and talent. The blues are the play’s heart, but its
structure is pure jazz: discursive, improvisatory, studded with solos that